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Commentary: The Super Bowl still comes down to two teams slugging it out

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I can’t believe the 50th Super Bowl will be played next month.

I remember the first one between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs. I was a freshman at USC and still can hear the cheering from the Los Angeles Coliseum like it was yesterday.

Who knew that first-ever AFL-NFL World Championship game would morph into the biggest sporting extravaganza in U.S. history?

To be sure, there have been some spectacular Super Bowl games. Football fans 65 or older remember Joe Namath’s bold prediction for Super Bowl III. They also can remember Franco Harris’s improbable playoff catch that propelled the Pittsburgh Steelers to four Super Bowls in the 1970s. Along the way, the likes of Joe Montana, John Elway, Tom Brady and so many others have been etched into our collective football conscience.

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But for me, a teenager attending SC 50 Super Bowls ago, that first game was the most memorable. To this day, as I prepare to watch the Super Bowl with friends, I still think about Bart Starr, Max McGee, Elijah Pitts, Len Dawson and all the other players who played that fateful day in 1967.

It’s estimated that 60 million people watched Super Bowl I on TV, but I feel as though I was there. I remember throwing passes to classmates in front of my dorm the same time the game was taking place across the street from campus.

Virtually half a century ago, Ronald Reagan was governor of California, O.J. Simpson was about to become a Trojan, the Vietnam War hadn’t spun out of control, Neil Armstrong was training to land on the moon, and Richard Nixon was years away from resigning the presidency.

Life clearly has become more complicated since then, but one thing has remained constant: That, of course, is the Super Bowl.

I don’t have a clue which two teams will make it to Super Bowl 50, but I do know this: After you strip away all the hype, hoopla and hysterics of the weeks leading up to the big game, it all comes down to two teams slugging it out on the field. This will be true next month in Silicon Valley, just like it was half a century ago in Los Angeles.

It goes without saying, I’ll be watching this year’s Super Bowl. Man, I love football.

DENNY FREIDENRICH lives in Laguna Beach.

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